1. Field of Invention
Embodiments of this disclosure relate generally to a semiconductor memory device and a method of operating the same and, more particularly, to a semiconductor memory device and a method of operating the same, which are capable of performing a soft program operation.
2. Related Art
In non-volatile memory devices, such as NAND flash memory among other semiconductor memory devices, a program operation on memory cells is performed using an FN tunneling method. The FN tunneling method is performed by providing a voltage of 15 V or higher to control gates while the cell channel of the memory cells is set to 0 V, thereby allowing electrons to move from the cell channel to floating gates. In this FN tunneling method, the influence of an electric field applied to the memory cells is significant since a voltage of 15 V or higher must be set in the control gates for a limited time while the cell channel is set to 0 V. This causes instability issues in memory cells, thus adversely affecting operation.